MoP: Cooking Specializations

MoP: Cooking Specializations

Pandaren cooking specializations are now being tested for Mists of Pandaria. Read on for a full preview of what can be found at Halfhill Market...

There are 6 cooking specializations. Each specialisation can be learnt from specific trainers found in the Halfhill Market in Valley of the Four Winds. All 6 specializations can be learnt at once.

Specializations require 530 cooking skill to learn. There is no level requirement to learn cooking specialisations. However level 80 is required to learn Zen Master Cooking, which is needed to reach 530 skill. Level 85 is needed to learn recipes for all of the higher-tier specialization dishes.

Cooking Specialization Stat Buffs

Each cooking specialization is associated with a buff stat. All the single-person (non-feast) dishes taught by one specialization will buff their specific stat:

Way of the Grill - Strength

Way of the Oven - Stamina

Way of the Pot - Intellect

Way of the Steamer - Spirit

Way of the Wok - Agility

Way of the Brew - Headaches and grandeur

Headaches and grandeur aren't really new buff stats! The Way of the Brew single-person dishes simply have descriptions like "known to cause massive headaches" and "may induce delusions of grandeur." The benefits of these are unknown - the Way of the Brew may simply be intended to help the Dwarves get drunk.

There are no specialized dishes for other buff stats, however there are non-specialized dishes offering Hit and Expertise buffs. Two of these dishes are trained by the Halfhill Market trainers, while Fish Cake is trained by Cooking Trainers everywhere.

Cooking Specialisation Skill

Each specialization has its own cooking skill bar. Cooking skill now works like this:

Your highest cooking skill (in any specialisation) is used to determine your personal cooking skill for anything that does not require a specialization. For example, it should be possible to gain an achievement for reaching 600 cooking skill based on reaching 600 in any one cooking specialization.

However, your ability to learn specialization-specific dishes is determined by your cooking skill in that specific specialization. For example, having 550 in the Way of the Pot will not allow you to learn a dish that requires 550 in the Way of the Grill.

Cooking Specialisation Leveling

Recipes are still using placeholder ingredients, and look rather incomplete, so much may change. Currently they follow this pattern (Stamina buffs are 50% higher):

250 stat buff dish is trained at cooking skill 530,

275 buff dish at skill 550,

both feasts at skill 575, and

300 buff dish at skill 600.

Recipes are typically orange until a new (higher-skilled) dish becomes trainable, so leveling cooking will not require a large volume of dishes to be cooked. Instead the higher-tier dishes require several ingredients per dish (especially feasts), so leveling cooking up to 600 will still require a lot of raw materials.

Lower-Skill Cooking with Pandarean Ingredients

There are several other work-in-progress tests being conducted at Halfhill Market. The most interesting is a set of trained recipes offered by Sungshin Ironpaw. These appear to allow new cooks to level cooking from 1 to around 500 using only basic Pandarean ingredients. For example, some recipes use Golden Carp (the new "trash fish", often caught when fishing open water in Pandaria). These dishes are the same as those sold by food vendors in Pandaria - typically providing a basic 100 or 200 stat buff: Worse than specialized dishes, but still useful for those leveling through Pandaria.

These recipes are noteworthy because each recipe remains orange until the cook's skill rises high enough to learn the next recipe. With the right ingredients, 1 to around 500 should be possible by cooking about 500 dishes. This will be much faster than existing recipes, which tend to be yellow and green (with only a chance of a skill-up, so require many more dishes to be cooked).

These new recipes are currently labelled "Test 1", so don't assume they will be available upon release - that is merely being considered.

Comments about MoP: Cooking Specializations

The mat for the lead in daily cooking quest (test 1 I think it was)
wildfowl drumstick
(not what I would guess makes rice pudding)
Killed everything in the zone several times over and over never did find the mat..

Thinking about it going to go kill stuff in Krasarang Wilds since its wild fowl.

I suspect enough critical ingredients are missing to make it impossible to level cooking yet. The only reason I could train specializations was because I had already reached 530 skill on Fish Cakes, back before the skill-up profile for that dish changed to go grey at 500.

The Journeyman Cookbook has caused a fair bit of discussion. It isn't available in-game, and given that it has "test" written all over it, probably never will be.

The spell it triggers is curious, because it is assigned to its own SkillLine group. SkillLines are groups of spells, like professions or specialisations. There was no need to create a new group just to have the item, so whatever the item is intended to test will be slightly unusual. Gut feeling is some sort of test for account-bound recipes, simply because it is called a "cookbook". But it could be something very different.

Not directly related to Specialisations however it may be useful for people here on the beta and attempting to level Cooking.

Basically pulling together all available data of known cooking ingredients listed on wowhead. Giving name, location and source/s where currently confirmed. Plus some thoughts on where those still missing may turn up. It includes the fish included on this site on the Pandaria > History page. I explain it more thoroughly on the WoW EU forum post here;

That's very useful. I may mirror some of that information here, because the beta forums have a habit of disappearing at the end of beta, and traditional cooking with only fish doesn't seem possible in Pandaria, so people will need to farm meat and vegetables too. (I suspect the meaning of the word "farm" is about to change too...)

That's very useful. I may mirror some of that information here, because the beta forums have a habit of disappearing at the end of beta, and traditional cooking with only fish doesn't seem possible in Pandaria, so people will need to farm meat and vegetables too. (I suspect the meaning of the word "farm" is about to change too...)

Please feel free to use any/ all of it El. I would have posted here but did not want to update more than one list. I am adding items as I go. Finding some new drops now in higher level areas.

I am still holding out that 'farming' may also include 'fish farming'... Much like the Jinyu and The Anglers do in their villages with nets. I noticed that they added Carp into the now in Sri-La Village that you can kill (lvl1) The same as the fish being spear fished over in Nayeli Lagoon.

Our very own personal fish pond...yum. Fingers crossed.

Also I still find it weird that Wowhead list all vegetables under 'Meat' still.

Added: And I should clarify that most of the ingredients you list as unknown are not currently used in cooking recipes, so their status is moot.

It's true that there are no recipes for some of these however it does leave open to question what they do with the beasts roaming Pandaria that do not have a meat drop yet such as Goats (listed as unknown); Yak (seems reasonable they may be harvested for meat as they are domesticated Ox Flank?) ; Spinefish we know are an Alchemy recipe just not sure where it will drop. Jinyu Spirit Water sounds like something they intend to introduce somehow.

Then all the other Beasts like Bears, Porcupine, Wolves, Foxes, Stags etc. which have traditionally always provided some meat drop. Maybe they will share some of the meat types, though you have some funny consequences such as the Zandalari Raptors currently dropping Raw Tiger Meat!

For the ways the last 10 points you must cook 2 of the bigger feast.
Once your reg skill gets high enough all the way recipes also turn to gray but they still give skill in the way.
For each way at 575 make 3 small feast till 590 then make 2 of the large feast and tada 600 in that way.

BTW
With patch coming in groceries are going to take 100 items not 20 anymore so if your using that quest to get tokens I would spam it before the patch.
Take the quest get empty fill it get another empty fill it ect ect that way you can turn in one after the other without running back and forth.

Based on game data, not yet possible to check in-game, in the latest patch the 575-skill feasts now remain orange until 600, removing soyzan's problem. There have been a lot of other changes to cooking leveling too. Originally, the most effective method was to level 550 to 554 using the 530-skill recipe, which then meant the feast remained orange for 5 points from 594 to 599, leaving only the last point as grey. This post explains the problem.

BTW, the 100 items quoted by MMO-Champion is misleading. It applies only to the Ginseng bundle and a few of the vegetables (and even then they list the Ginseng bundle with a bugged tooltip, which says 20). Based on the data in MMO-Champion's own database, the other bundles are unchanged - except that Golden Carp's tooltip is now correct, at 60 - everything else still requires 20. The 5-fold increase in vegetables is consistent with recipe changes (which also see far more vegetables required), so likely there are major changes afoot regarding vegetables.

Balanced against the greater requirement for some recipes, you get more vegetables per Sack when trading Bundles of Groceries with Nam Ironpaw. Datamined items now show generally 25 veg. per sack up from 5. This is probably aiming at balancing up thing with Farming likely to be in place soon and another source of these.

Worth checking still what you can get hold of more easily and what you will require when sourcing ingredients this way. And the new data is still quite mixed up across the same items so expect some more changes before it settles.

If they do add in the empty containers for ingredients you can buy as they could do (in database not yet implemented), then another option will be to buy your way through it for those with the gold to spare. Example;

Currently 70s each o Beta from Sungshin Ironpaw that would be 70*20= 14g/Bundle of Groceries/per token.

Seems too low to me so maybe they will adjust number required for lower value items or price (though it needs to be reasonable for levelling purposes also available)

Together with new items that allow you to swap stacks of veg., Meat & Vegetable Traders at Halfhill Market, AH, Bundles etc. it looks like a number of options will be available to help flatten out potential oversupply and undersupply.

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